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Agent of Change: Leah Gaskin Fitchue, Ed.D.'74

Leah FitchueLeah Gaskin Fitchue, Ed.D.’74, left the Ed School upon graduating eager to be an agent of change. Now, over 38 years later, Fitchue returned to HGSE to participate in the Programs in Professional Education’s Harvard Seminar for Experienced College Presidents – an opportunity, she says, to continue her own education about change.

“As a change agent, you have to be a student of change and you have to engage in self-reflection,” says Fitchue, currently the president of Payne Theological Seminary in Wilberforce, Ohio – one of the oldest Black seminaries in the nation. “This is about looking at what we are doing that is working or what we should be doing differently. I have to model to students that I too am in development.”

With an educational career stretching from working as the head of the Philadelphia Education League to serving as a professor of religious studies at Hampton University, Fitchue took on the role as president of Payne nine years ago – the first female to ever do so. As she explains, theological education – in Payne’s case, graduate-level training often required for ordination – is facing many of the same issues as traditional higher education.

“There is no greater opportunity than improving a system when old structures are beginning to give way,” she says, citing shifts in Christianity, religious pluralism, and ever-changing technology among her school’s challenges.

In 2005–2006, under Fitchue’s leadership, Payne began offering an online degree in which two-thirds of a student’s education occurred online, and the remaining one-third in residence. It was the first among the six traditionally African American theological schools to offer an online degree. “[It’s unfair to] expect everyone to move here for three years, so we pondered how to make this available to the Afro-centric theological environment,” she says.

The online degree balanced with a residential component was the answer.  As Fitchue explains, the shift increased the school’s connection to nearly two million people, reaching far beyond its physical location in Ohio. The first class of students completed the program in 2008. Currently there are 180 students enrolled in the program with hopes to reach 200 by 2017.

At a time of high competition amongst institutions and of social networking influencing daily communication, Fitchue sees online education as one of the most exciting ways to level the playing field. She lauds the equalizing factor of technology.

“I’ve been concerned about education becoming elitist due to the cost of education, but technology makes it possible for everyone,” she says, applauding universities that have offered free online courses. “To now know that through technology those who do not have the means can now study.”

For Pitchue, next to God, education was always the answer. Growing up in an African American family that had survived slavery and other challenges, education had always been treasured as a promise of the future. “To be respected was to get good grades and do your best,” she says, remembering the looks on her family member’s faces as they reviewed her report cards.

This memory has driven her educational experience as she earned degrees in speech pathology and divinity. She also became an ordained minister along the way.

Currently, a visiting scholar at Princeton Theological School, Fitchue is exploring ways to provide access to school archives as a means to educate others. At the Harvard Seminar for Experienced College Presidents, Fitchue shared that there was a lot of talk amongst participants about a revolution in higher education.

“Today it is so important a responsibility to become better educated, to understand, and seek the finest education and prepare the self for service,” she says. “The ultimate realization is to use your gifts and skills for empowerment in which people are oppressed or marginalized.”

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